As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."

Monday, August 17, 2009

Conservatives Vs. Liberals, Lesson MCMXXXVII

The last Administration actually instituted a program asking people to call in tips on their neighbors or anyone who looked suspicious to them. After bipartisan outcry the program was supposedly canceled, and yet trained terrorism liaison officers culled from the law enforcement and elsewhere continued to look for "suspicious activity," secret surveillance programs continued to data mine the private communications of Americans, etc.

This Administration responds to deliberate misinformation passed out about health care reform by asking their supporters to flag them for them, essentially crowdsourcing the lies. This becomes twisted by the right as an effort to spy on neighbors and friends and "turn in" opponents of health care reform, to the extent that Sen. John Cornyn calls it a "data collection program." And predictably, the White House shut it down.

So one President actually rampantly spies on the entire population of America for eight years, the other asks for tips on misinformation, and not only are they described as the same thing, but conservatives are actually successful at shutting down what they find abhorrent, while this President joined Congressional efforts to legalize the abuses of the surveillance state from the last regime.

And we're surprised, in this environment, that it's difficult to pass health care reform?